Лорен Уиллиг - The Orchid Affair

“Marzipan what?”

“Pigs.” I hoisted my bag up on my shoulder and followed him back along the hall to the elevator, walking a little bit behind, since there wasn’t room for us to go two abreast. “They were sort of a thing for me and—well, they were sort of a thing last time I was here.”

I squeezed myself into the elevator next to him. No need to explain that the last time I had been in Paris had been with my ex, Grant. He’d been speaking at an academic conference and I had tagged along. A lot of Grant’s time had been devoted to departmental schmoozing, which was only fair, considering that his department had been paying his tab, but I had managed to kidnap him for coffee and cake in between panels.

I had been delighted by the marzipan-coated pigs, Grant rather less so. He had been even less delighted when the pig attempted to carry on a conversation with him. Not that it was anything particularly deep. It had been more of the “Hello, Mr. Piven. Are you planning to eat me?” variety. Grant had been terrified that one of his colleagues would see him in flagrante pigilicto . Not very good for one’s image as a mature and responsible member of the faculty of the Harvard gov department.

That was what he got, I’d teased him, for dating a grad student.

Not one of his grad students, he’d hastily specified. Dating one’s own grad students was a no-no, punishable by expulsion. I was in another department; I was fair game.

So, apparently, were underage art historians.

But that had all been a long time ago. Two years ago, to be precise. It had been more than a year now since the breakup, two years since we had been in Paris together. This Paris would be a different city; my city with Colin, not with Grant.

The elevator decanted us into the lobby and we wiggled our way out, the strap of my bag snagging on Colin’s coat.

“Marzipan pigs, eh?” said Colin, skeptical, but game, and I liked him even more for it, liked him so much that it made my chest hurt.

“You’ll see.” I threaded my arm through his. “The big question is, tail first or head first?”

“What do you usually do?” he asked.

“I generally start with the tail and work my way up.”

“Prolonging the agony? Bloodthirsty woman.” Colin sounded like he rather approved. He nodded towards the desk. “Shall we see if Serena’s in yet?”

“We can get her a pig too,” I said cheerfully. Serena needed fattening up. They say a camel can’t fit through the eye of a needle, but Serena probably could. She was at the point of thin that crosses over from elegant to gaunt. And, no, that wasn’t just sour grapes speaking.

I smiled ingratiatingly at the receptionist, who couldn’t have cared less.

“Est-ce que une Serena Selwick est ici?” I asked in my very ungrammatical sixth-grade French. I can read the stuff; just don’t ask me to speak it.

The receptionist was not impressed. She checked the book. “Selwick . . . 403?”

“Um, no,” I said. “I mean, non . Nous sommes dans 403 . Me and him. Nous cherchons l’autre Selwick. Serena?”

“Oui.” The woman seemed unfazed. She poked a manicured nail at the book. “Selwick. 403.”

This was getting a little frustrating. “ Mais où est l’autre Selwick? Une autre Selwick? There should be another reservation.”

Now it was her turn to look confused. From the look on her face, she was thinking, Americans . Why do I always get the Americans?

Colin stepped in. “My sister is also staying here,” he said in accented but perfectly grammatical French. “Which room is she in?”

“Room 403,” repeated the woman in the same language, frowning at him, although not as she had frowned at me. This was confusion, not annoyance. “The entire party is in 403. It is a room for three.”

“What?” I yelped. Like I said, I can’t speak it, but I can understand it. Room for three came across loud and clear.

Turning to me, she switched to English. “How you say? A . . . three-person,” she said helpfully.

Not if I had anything to do with it, it wasn’t. “There’s been a mistake,” I said.

“No mistake,” she said peacefully. “Selwick, 403.” She tapped the ledger for emphasis.

I was getting pretty damn sick of that ledger.

“That may be so,” I said, “but we reserved two rooms, one for two people, one for one.” I looked to Colin for support. “Didn’t we?”

“Um . . .” Colin didn’t quite meet my eyes. Never a good sign.

I shifted so that we were facing away from the reception desk, our bodies angled away from the receptionist, who was watching us with a certain amount of I-told-you-so, or whatever that might be translated into French. “What did you do?” I whispered.

“I didn’t do anything,” said Colin with patent untruth.

“All right,” I said, with the same tone of exaggerated patience he had used on me. I wasn’t going to quibble over syntax. There were more important things to quibble over. Like who was going to be sleeping on the couch. “What did you not do?”

“I rang and asked them to add an extra.”

“An extra room or an extra person?”

Colin jammed his fists in the pockets of his Barbour jacket, pulling it down taut around his shoulders. “I don’t remember.”

There went my moral high ground with the desk woman.

I bared my teeth in a fake smile, just for her benefit. “Try.”

“Does it matter?” Colin raked a hand through his already disordered hair. “Look, we’ll get it sorted, all right? It’s not that big a deal.”

Not that big a deal? If he wanted to share a bed with Serena, that was just fine with me. My lingerie and I would be elsewhere. Like back in London.

If I stayed any longer I was going to say something I would regret later, and that wouldn’t be good. For either of us. Discretion might not be the better part of valor, but it saves you a lot of apologizing later on.

“Here,” I said, thrusting the key into his hand. “You got us into this; you get it sorted. I have research to do.”

And with that, I fled out into the rain.

Paris, 1804

“Around the back,” said the gatekeeper.

Laura scrambled backwards as a moving wall of iron careened towards her face. From the distance, the gate was a grand thing, a towering edifice of black metal with heraldic symbols outlined in flaking gilt. From up close, it was decidedly less attractive. Especially when it was on a collision course with one’s nose. Her nose might not be a thing of beauty, but she liked it where it was.

“But—” Laura grabbed at the bars with her gloved hands. The leather skidded against the bars, leaving long, rusty streaks across her palms. So much for her last pair of gloves.

Laura bit down on a sharp exclamation of frustration. She reminded herself of Rule #10 of the Guide to Better Governessing: Never Let Them See You Suffer. Weakness bred contempt. If there was one thing she had learned, it was that the meek never inherited anything—except maybe a gate to the nose.

“I am expected,” Laura announced with all the dignity she could muster.

It was hard to be dignified with raindrops dripping off one’s nose. She could feel wet strands of hair scraggling down her neck, under the back of her collar. Errant strands tickled her back, making her want to squirm. Oh, heavens, that itched.

She looked down her nose through the grille of ironwork. “Kindly let me in.”

Ahead of her, just a stretch of courtyard away, across gardens grown unkempt with neglect, lay warmth and shelter. Or at least shelter. From the look of the unlit windows, there was precious little warmth. But even a roof looked good to her right now. Roofs served an important purpose. They kept off rain. Blasted rain. This was France, not England. What was it doing mizzling like this?